The Diaries of Jane Somers

Her employer’s wife gave her a skirt and a blouse once. ‘She valued me, you see. We had to have a decent appearance because the buyers would come into the workrooms. Oh, don’t think it was from a good heart, she didn’t have one. She didn’t want to lose me. It was years before I could buy myself a nice brown cloth dress of my own, and my own shoes. And when I did, oh, I’ll not forget that day. I went without so much for that dress. And I wore it on the Sunday first so Laurie could see it. And who gave you that? he said, for that was what he was like, tugging at my arm and hurting it. Who was it, tell me? It wasn’t you, I said to him, and as I pulled my arm from him, it tore under the arm. Not much, but the dress was spoiled. Oh yes, a person has his stamp all through him. You know what I’m saying? But I didn’t know that then. It wasn’t long before I knew that in everything he did, it was the same: a new dress I’d saved and gone without for, but he tore it the first time I put it on. But it didn’t matter, I mended it, it didn’t show, and I went into the workroom and peacocked around, and the girls all clapped and sang “A Little Bit of What You Fancy Does You Good”.

‘That was just before I was promoted, and soon I got another dress, a blue foulard, but I never loved another dress as I loved that first one I paid for myself.

‘Oh what times we did have in that workroom. There were fifteen of us, apprentices and milliners. We sat all around a long table, with the boxes of trimmings on trestles behind us, and the hats and bonnets we were working on on their forms in front of us. We used to sing and lark about. Sometimes when I got a bit carried away, she used to come up and say, Who’s making all that noise? It’s Maudie! The rule is, silence when you work. But I had to sing, I was so enjoying myself, and soon we were all singing, but she didn’t want to lose me, you see.

‘Did I tell you how I learned to know that I was a value to her? If I did, I’ll tell you again, because I love to think of it. You see, he used to go off to Paris, and see the new season’s hats in the shops, and sometimes in the workrooms of the Paris milliners, for he knew people who could snatch him a glimpse. He knew how to remember a hat or a bonnet that would do for us. He used to keep it all in his mind, and nip out quick and draw it. He couldn’t draw really, but he’d have the main things, a shape or the set of a ribbon. And then he’d come back and say, You do this, see, it’s this shape and that colour, made of velvet or satin, you do what you can. Well, it was as if I could see the real hat behind the scribble on the paper, and I’d work away there, and finish it, and I’d say to him, Is that anywhere near it, Mr Rolovsky? And he’d take it up and stare and say, Well, it’s not too bad, Maudie. That pleased me. But then I saw how he’d come and stand behind me and watch while I worked, always me, not the others, and then the way he snatched up the hat when I’d done, for he was so greedy, you see, he couldn’t hide it. I saw then I’d come near what he’d seen in Paris. And the girls all knew too, and we’d give each other winks. She saw us at it, and she said, That’s enough, I don’t see what there is to wink at. For she was clever, the missus was, but she wasn’t clever at anything but her job, which was making the workroom pay. Have you noticed that at all? A person can be clever as can be, in one direction, and stupid in another. She thought we didn’t know what she was trying to cover up, and yet it was all plain to us. I had a gift, you see, I had it in my fingers and in my mind’s eye, and it was worth everything to them, because when the buyers came in, he always showed them my work first, and it was always my work that he charged the most for.

‘I’ve stood outside the showrooms, just off Bond Street they were, and looked at the hats in the window, only two or three of course, not crammed the way the windows for cheap hats were done, and the hats were always mine. And snapped up as soon as I could do them.

‘Yes, I can see from your face what you’re wanting to say, and you’re right. I never got paid extra for it. I got the top wages for the job, but that was never much, never enough to free my mind of worrying about the future. Yes, you are right again, don’t think I haven’t thought and thought about why I didn’t go somewhere else, or say, Give me what I am worth to you or I’ll leave. But for one thing, I loved that work so, I loved it all, the colours and the feel of the materials; and then the other girls, we had worked together so long by then, and we knew each other and all our troubles, and then … Well, of course there was more to it. For one thing, it was partly my fault. He wanted me to go to Paris. Oh no, if he had anything else in mind, he couldn’t let it be that. He said, The wife’ll come too, don’t you worry, it will all be fair and right. What he wanted was for me to come with him into the workrooms when he could sneak himself in, and look at the hats for myself. He was really getting carried away by it all, he imagined my coming back to London and copying all those hats and bonnets, hundreds of them, I daresay, not just the few he could keep in his mind. And he said he would pay me properly for it. Well, being him, being that pair, I knew better than to think it would be much, but it would be a lot for me. And yet I couldn’t bring myself, I said no.

‘That was twice I was invited to France, when I was a girl, once with Mrs Privett and once with that pair of … One a real lady and then two nasty penny-pinchers, the good and the bad.

‘Yes, I know what you are thinking. It was Laurie. He’d never have let me hear the end of it if I’d gone to Paris, even if I’d gone with a regiment of guards to look after me, he’d have taken it out of me. And it was bad enough as it was, before we even married, I had bruises on my arms, and it was always: Who was it? Who looked at you? Who gave you that handkerchief? – because I used to pinch and save for proper linen hankies with real lace, I loved them, I loved pretty things. But he never knew I could have gone to Paris then. And if I had, perhaps I might have stayed, I might have married a Frenchie. I could have married a German, couldn’t I? Sometimes I look back and I see that my life had these chances, leading to something wonderful, who knows? And yet I never took them, I always said, No, no, to what was offered.

‘And yet I had such happy times, I think except for Johnnie they were the best in my life, better even than Hans and our Sundays. I like to sit here and think back to us girls, sitting around those lovely hats, oh they were so beautiful those hats, singing and larking and telling stories, and she always around, Maudie here and Maudie there, it’s always you who are the ringleader, she’d say, but I was her best and she knew it, and though she’d like to have seen the last of me, because he had his eye on me, and everyone knew it, she had to put up with me, didn’t she? And I didn’t care. I’d sing away, I’d sing – shall I sing you one of my songs? Yes, I will …’

And Maudie sits singing the old music-hall songs, some I’ve never heard of. Her voice is off pitch now, keeps cracking, but you can hear what it was like in her laugh.

A Happiness.

‘I must have got pregnant the night of our wedding. Nine months to the day, it was. And Laurie was so pleased once we knew. Would you believe it, I was so silly, I didn’t know what was wrong with me! I crept off to the doctor and said, I am sickening, I’m dying, I feel so ill, and I feel this and that. And I lay down and he felt my stomach, and he sat down behind his table and he laughed. Oh, it was a nice laugh, it didn’t make me feel bad, but I did feel silly. He said, Mrs Fowler, didn’t it occur to you that you are pregnant? What’s that? said I. You are going to have a baby, said he. Oh go on, I said, it can’t be – for I hadn’t got the expectation of it into my mind at all.

‘And then I told Laurie and he cried, he was so pleased. We were in the front room of a house in the next street to this. He painted the room beautifully, for he was a good tradesman, no one could say otherwise, he painted it a lovely shining cream, and the garlands on the ceiling he painted gold and blue, and the skirting boards and the picture rail blue. And he bought a little chest and made that blue, and kept buying little coats and hats – oh, sizes too big, Johnnie didn’t get into them for two or three years after Laurie left me. But I was so happy, I thought I was a queen for those few months. He treated me like I was a piece of crystal or a new cup. He kept buying me all sorts of fancies, for I was after pickles and chocolate and ginger and stuff, and they cost him.

‘And then the baby was born, my Johnnie. And you’ll never guess. From that moment on there was never a kind word for me. How is it a grown man behaves like a little boy? He was jealous, jealous of a baby! But I didn’t know then that was how it was going to be. I used to tease him, and then he hit me. All the good times were over. I used to sit there in my nursing chair, which he had made for me, and nurse the baby, and look at the lovely painted ceiling, and think, oh I’m so hungry, so hungry, because Johnnie was such a feeding baby, he sucked and sucked. I’d say, Laurie, get me a bit of lamb for a stew, buy me some bacon, we’ll have it with dumplings. And he’d say, What am I going to use for money? And he was in work. Well, I’ll not fill your ears with the misery of it when I understood what the future was to be, because what I like is, to look back and think of me sitting like a queen in that lovely room, in my lovely chair, with Johnnie, and thinking how when Laurie got used to it we’d all be so happy.’

A month later.

I’ve never worked as hard as this! If I keep a skeleton of this diary going, then perhaps later …

Joyce is just holding herself together, but she is not with us. I am doing all the interviewing, parties, running about, lunches, conferences. We keep her out of sight mostly. Her defences are well inside herself, not where mine are, outside in clothes, hair, etc. She looks awful, a mess. In addition, this series of articles on clothes as an expression of the mood of the seventies, sixties, fifties. They wanted more. I seem never to be able to lose it, undervaluing myself. I would not have thought of myself as able to write for a serious sociological mag, but here I am. So I get up at six to do the work for that.

And I see Maudie every evening, or if not I make sure she knows I’m not coming. I go in, exhausted, but then I shop and do a little bit of cleaning, and then I slump and listen, and listen. Sometimes she tells it well, and laughs, and knows she is pleasing me. Others, she mutters and is fierce and won’t look at me, sitting there in my lovely clothes. I have bought a whole new outfit, madly expensive, I feel it as a bulwark against chaos. She leans over and feels the silk of my shirt, none of this cheap Chinese stuff, no. She strokes my skirt, and then looks up into my face, with a sigh, for she knows how good my things are, who better? And then she will turn away her little face and put her hand up to her cheek to shield it, and stare into the fire. Shuts me out. And then she starts again, forgiving me with a little laugh: So what have you been doing today? But she doesn’t want to know, my world is too much for her, she wants to talk …

‘And then one day he left me, he said, You don’t care for me now you’ve got him, and he took up his tools and he left. I didn’t believe it. I was waiting for him to come back, for years as it turned out. But there I was, with nothing to pay the rent with. I went to the Rolovskys and asked – oh, that was hard, I’d never begged of them before. I had said I was getting married, you see, and she had given me a hard time, making me work all hours, to get as much out of me as she could before she lost me. And here I was again, after not even two years. Well, she made a favour of it. And someone else was forewoman now. And it wasn’t the same in the workroom. For one thing, I didn’t have the heart to sing and dance. I put Johnnie with a baby-minder. She wasn’t a bad woman, but it wasn’t what I wanted for him. I’d be sick worrying, has she given him his medicine, or his milk? For he was delicate, he always had a cough. But I had enough to keep us. Then the people where I was said they wanted my room. They didn’t want a baby, that was what they meant. And they did want all that lovely blue and gold for themselves. And so I came here. The woman who had the house didn’t mind a baby, but I had to keep him quiet, she said. I was on the top floor then, the little room at the back. It was cheap, and we looked out at the trees there, lovely it was. But I found it hard to pay for everything. I went to my aunt, but she could only just manage for herself. She said, Go to your father. But he had said if I married Laurie I should never darken his door. And he was right, for once … Did I tell you about my wedding?’

And Maudie sat laughing, laughing, and pulled out a drawer and showed me a photograph. A tiny woman, under an enormous flowered hat, in a neat tight dress. ‘Yes,’ says she, ‘I looked a proper mess. I had been saying yes and no, yes and no, because what would happen was, I’d say, No, and then he’d start his squeezing and wanting, and I’d say, Yes, and he’d say, I suppose Harry (there was another boy who fancied me) won’t have you, so I’d say, No. But at last we got to say yes at the same time. I borrowed my cousin Flo’s best hat and her church gloves. My dress was my own. I sent a message to Father and said I was getting married on Sunday. He came over to Auntie’s and Laurie was there, and he stood in the doorway and said to me, If you marry him that is the last time you’ll see me. Well, I hadn’t seen him for nearly ten years as it was. I said, Will you come and see me married at least?

‘On that morning Laurie was worse than I’d ever seen him, fit to burst with black looks and pinches and grumbles. We walked to church with my Auntie, and we were quarrelling all the way. There was Father, all in his best striped clothes and top hat, oh what a dresser he was! And she was there too, she had got so fat, and I couldn’t help crowing secretly, she could hardly walk, all in purple and black feathers, and by then I’d come to know what was really good and what wasn’t, and I could see she was nothing, we wouldn’t have her in our workroom. But I was nothing too, that day, I could have got a hat from the workroom for the wedding to marry in, but I didn’t want a favour from the Rolovskys. And so we were married, sulking and not looking at each other. After the wedding, there was a photographer who took this, and then when Father went off towards the carriage with her, I ran after them and said, Can I come with you? But you’ve just got married, said she, really astonished she was, and I don’t blame her. And Father said, That’s right, you come home and don’t waste time on him. So I got into the carriage and left Laurie at the church …’ And at this Maudie laughs and laughs, her strong, girl’s laugh.

‘After I’d enjoyed myself at home for a little, and eaten my fill of everything, I thought, Well, I have a husband, and I said to them, Thanks, but I’d better be off home, and I went, Father saying, Never darken my doors. And I didn’t, for he died soon after of a stroke. And they didn’t tell me about the funeral.

‘But my sister was there, right enough. Suddenly she began showing herself off and buying herself clothes, and then they moved to a better house. I knew Father had left something to us both, and I went to her and said, Where is what Father left me? And she couldn’t look me in the face. What makes you think you had anything coming? she said. You never came to see us, did you? But who threw me out? I said. And we quarrelled and quarrelled and she shrieked at me. I went to my sister, willing myself to do it because she always treated me so bad, and I said, Polly, where’s my share of the money? She has got it, my sister said. You’ll have to go to a lawyer. Well, how could I do that? You need money for lawyers. I and Laurie were all lovey-dovey just then, and we both of us found it such a nice change, we didn’t want to waste any of it.

‘Much later, when I was so down and poor and in need of everything, I went to my sister, and she must have told her, for one day when I got back from work the landlady said a big woman in feathers and scarlet had been and left me a parcel. It was some of my mother’s clothes, that’s all, and her old purse with two gold guineas in it. And that’s all I ever had from my father. For I never saw her again.’

Maudie’s very bad time.

‘I worked so hard and so hard. I used to get up so early and take Johnnie to the minder’s, and then to work, and work all day till six or seven. And then back to pick up Johnnie, and she’d be cross, often, because I was late and she wanted to be rid of him. And I’d get home and find not enough food for him and me. I was earning badly then. Mrs Rolovsky never forgave me for leaving when I married and then coming back. I wasn’t the pet any longer, and she was always taking her chance to fine me, or give me a hat that would take twice as long as the others. We were paid by what we’d got done, you see. And I never was able to scamp my work. I had to do it properly even if I was to suffer. And then we were put off. We were put off most summers. Oh, no security then, no pensions, nothing. She’d say, Pick up your cards as you go out, and leave your address, and we’ll contact you when there’s work.

‘That war was coming, it was nearly on us, and times were bad. I didn’t know what to do. I had a little saved, but not much. I had Johnnie home from the minder’s, that was something because I hardly ever saw him awake when I was working, but how to feed him? The landlady said, No, no credit on the rent. I kept the rent paid, but often and often I went to bed on cold water so Johnnie could have a cup of milk. It went on and on, and that was such a wonderful summer. I was wild with hunger. I’d go into the gardens and see if there was bread lying there the birds hadn’t eaten. But others had the same idea, and I’d be there first, hanging around, pretending I wasn’t watching while the people spread out the bread for the birds. Once I said to an old woman, I need that more than the birds. Then earn it, said she. I never forgot that, and I’ll never forget it. For there was no work. I tried to get a cleaning job, but they wouldn’t have me cleaning with a child hanging around. I didn’t know what I would do.

‘Then suddenly Laurie turns up, and finds me in bed on a Sunday afternoon, with my arms around Johnnie. I felt so faint and sick, you see. Oh, what a commotion, what a to-do! First, of course, it was all shouts, Why did you move without telling me? And then it was, You know I’d never let you go without! Then prove it, I said, and off he went and came back with groceries. I could have done with biscuits and tea and dried peas and stuff I could have kept, but no, being Laurie, it was all fancy cakes and ham. Well, I ate and Johnnie ate, and after all that he took us out for some food. I’m your Daddy, says he to Johnnie, and of course the little boy is pleased. And then, he went off. Back tomorrow, says Laurie, but I didn’t see him for months.

‘Meanwhile I’d hit the bottom. I went to Relief. In those days there was a Board stuffed with snobby ladies and gentlemen, and you’d stand there, and they’d say, Why don’t you sell your locket, if you’re so poor – it was my mother’s – have you got any personal belongings, we can’t keep people who have their own resources. Their own resources! You say you have a little boy, and they say, Then you must force your husband to contribute. You couldn’t explain to the likes of them about the likes of Laurie. Well, they said I could have two shillings a week. That was high summer still, and no end to it in sight. They sent a man around. I’d pawned everything, except a blanket for Johnnie, for I was sleeping under my coat. He came into our room. Bed with a mattress but no bedclothes, a wooden table – this one here, that you like. Two wooden chairs. A shelf that had on it a bit of sugar and half a loaf of bread. He stood there, in his good clothes, and looked at me and Johnnie, and then he said, Have you sold everything you can? And I had, even my mother’s locket. And he leaned forward and pointed to this …’ Maudie showed me the long dark wood stick with which she pushes back and opens the curtains. ‘What about this? he said. How am I to open and close my curtains? I said. Are you expecting me to sell my curtains as well? Shall I sell the bed and sleep on the floor, then?

‘He was a little ashamed then, not much, it wasn’t his job to be ashamed of what he had to do. And that was how I got my two shillings a week.’

‘And could you live on it?’

‘You would be surprised what you can live on. Johnnie and I, we ate bread, and he got some milk, and so we lived until the autumn and there was a note from the Rolovskys: they’d take me on but at less money. Because of the hard times. I would have worked for half what they gave. I slowly got back the blankets from the pawnshop, for the winter, and I got my pillows, and then … One day, when I got to the baby-minder’s, no Johnnie. Laurie had come and taken him away. I begged and screamed and begged, but she said he was the child’s father, she couldn’t refuse a child to his father – and I went mad, running about the streets, and going everywhere. No one had heard anything. No one knew. I was very ill then. I lay in bed, I didn’t care, I thought I would die and I would have welcomed it. I lost my job at the Rolovskys’, and that was the end of them, for me. When I was up, I got myself a job cleaning, to tide me over, because without a child they’d employ me. And when I saved up enough I went to a lawyer. I said, How can I get my child back? But where is your husband? he said. I don’t know, I said. Then how can I help you? he said. I don’t know, I said. You must advertise for him, he said. But where? I said. Isn’t there a way of finding out where people are? Yes, but it costs money, he said. And I haven’t got any, I said.

‘And then he came over to me and put his hands all over me, and he said, Very well, Maudie, you know what you can do if you want me to help you. And I ran, and I ran, out of that office, and I was scared to go near a lawyer again.

‘All this time, Laurie had Johnnie down in the West Country with a woman he had then. Much later, when I met Johnnie again, he told me she was good to him. Not his father, for his father was off soon, to another woman, he could never stay with one woman. No, this woman brought him up. And he did not know he had a mother, he didn’t know about me. Not till quite recently, but I’ll tell you another time, another time, I’m all roiled up and upset with thinking about it all, and I meant to tell you something nice tonight, one of the times I like to think about, not a bad time …’

A nice time.

Maudie was walking down the High Street, and she saw some hats in a window. She was appalled at the way the hats were made. She went in and said to a woman who was making a hat, Don’t you know how to put a hat together? And the woman said, No, she had been left a widow with a bit of money and thought she would make hats. Well, said Maudie, you have to learn how to make a hat, as you have to learn to scrub a floor or bake a loaf. I’ll show you. She was a bit huffy at first, but she wanted to learn.

‘I used to go in there, and she’d show me what she’d done, and I’d make her pick it to pieces again, or I’d make her whole hat, for the skill was in my fingers still, and it is now, I know. And yes, I can see from your face what you are thinking, and you’re right. No, she didn’t pay me. But I loved it, you see. Of course, it wasn’t like the Rolovskys’, not the West End, nothing in the way of real good silks and satins, just cheap stuff. But all the same, between us, we made some lovely hats and she got a name for it. And soon she sold the shop for the goodwill – but the goodwill was me, really, and that wasn’t in any contract and so I don’t know what happened afterwards …’

A nice time.

Maudie was working for an actress who was at the Lyric Theatre, Hammersmith. She was prepared to take an hour’s journey there, and an hour back, because this woman was so gay and laughing and always had a joke. ‘She lived alone, no man, no children, and she worked. Oh, they work so, these poor actresses, and I used to make her supper ready for the oven, or a good big salad on a plate, and get her fire laid, and go home thinking how she’d be so happy to come in and see everything so nice. And sometimes after a matinée she’d say, Sit down, Maudie, share my supper, I don’t know what I’d do without you. And she’d tell me all about the theatre. She wasn’t a star, she was what they call a character actress. Well, she was a character all right. And then she died. What of? I was so upset I didn’t want to know. It was a sudden death. I got a letter one day, and it was, she had died, sudden. So I didn’t go back, though I was owed a fortnight’s money.’